Download Mesopatamia

Mesopatamia
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• 2. On the Persian Gulf end of Mesopotamia was a region
called Sumer where farmers built villages that grew and
grew, just like the grains being planted. These early settlers
built homes using bricks made from the mud the Tigris and
Euphrates left behind, and by about 3000 BC there were
enough houses to make small cities. Farmers worked
together to create irrigation and drainage ditches to direct
water where they wanted it and help prevent the great
rivers from flooding the cities.
• 3. The Sumerians are credited with some of
the most amazing inventions in human
history. They invented the arch. They made
wagons, the first-ever wheeled vehicles (the
wheel itself was probably invented earlier).
• 4. Sumerians were a polytheistic people - they believed
there was not just one but many gods, whose favor they
needed to live good lives. Each city-state had a particular
favorite or patron god. In honor of these deities, the
people built huge temples, like pyramids with stairs up
the sides. These were ziggurats, and they were often the
centerpieces of city-states.
• 5. The Mesopotamians used etchings on stone
tablets to tell their stories and display their rules.
They developed some of the earliest forms of
writing. The system used by Sumerian scribes was
called cuneiform, and it used small geometrical
shapes scratched into wet stone that later dried and
hardened to recount stories and keep track of trade,
taxes, military issues, and more.
• 6. Sargon is thought to be the first ruler in
world history to have a permanent, standing
army at his command, an army that was one
of the first to use bows and arrows. He was
the emperor of the Akkadians around 2000
BC.
• 7. Whoever has the strongest army will rule.
The Babylonians were the next power-hungry
army to conquer Mesopotamia.
• 8. The Babylonian army was led by a mighty
leader named Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC). He
rose to power much like his predecessor Sargon,
driving wedges between the cities of Sumer and
systematically conquering each one in turn. He
had a well-trained army of ax- and spear-toting
foot soldiers.
• 9. These laws were brought into being by
Hammurabi. Hammurabi's Code, etched into a
tablet, included 282 laws based largely on the
principle of retribution: If you poke out a free
person's eye, your eye is poked out, too.
• 10. In about 700 BC the Assyrians, a people who
lived in the hills at the end of the Tigris River, moved
into the area that Hammurabi had ruled. Using iron
weapons (like the Hittites to the north), they soon
acquired all of the Fertile Crescent and much of the
surrounding territory. They did this the way most
conquering happens: by killing people.
• 11. When your army enters a city, you, as general,
had three basic choices: You could occupy this, take
everything valuable and leave it, or burn it to the
ground. When the Assyrians invaded Babylon, they
chose option number 3. But all wasn't lost. One of
the great things they did was build a royal library,
which housed a copy of one of the oldest stories ever
written down: the Epic of Gilgamesh.
• 12. The Assyrians were toppled in part by the
Chaldeans, who came from present-day Syria. It was
their King Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) who was
the next great ruler of the area. He rebuilt Babylon,
making it once again the most important city in the
region. According to the Bible, the city-center was
dominated by the enormous Tower of Babel.
• 13. It was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon that
became one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world. Legend has it that they were built to please
Nebuchadnezzar's wife, who missed the green,
mountainous land that she came from. So her
husband had a terraced garden, overflowing with
plants, constructed for her.
• 14. Along the Mediterranean coast of the Middle
East, a unique civilization was doing things a little
differently. They were the Phoenicians. One of
their legacies is our modern-day alphabet. Their
alphabet was adapted by the Greeks and then the
Romans; it's not too different from the one we
use today.
• 15. The Phoenicians realized that power wasn't just
about having the biggest army; it was also about
having the most money. So they built a trading
empire that connected various tribes and civilizations
around the Mediterranean. But what's the best way
to get goods from one place to another? Not on
rickety old carts where bandits can rob you at every
turn, but on fast ships.
• 16. The Phoenicians built a lot of impressive
ships. Their ships made it all the way to Britain
and the west coast of Africa, bringing wood,
slaves, and glass to the Greeks and North
Africans.
• 17. The Phoenicians invented glassblowing, but the
truly hot product everyone just had to have was
purple dye. They got the dye from a special kind of
sea snail that basically sneezed it out. Only the
Phoenicians lived near the snails, so only they had
the royal purple dye. In fact, the word Phoenician
means "purple people" in Greek.
• 18. In nearby Turkey in 687 BC, the Lydians rose
to power. Their king was Gyges, who was friendly
with the Greeks (who were gaining power to their
west). The Lydians wrote themselves into history
by issuing the first gold coins.
• 19. Meanwhile, on the Mediterranean coast in a
place known as Canaan, the Hebrews were
organizing a state under a series of kings. The Jews
differed from other cultures in the region because
they were monotheistic - they worshipped a single
god, known as Yahweh - and they were nomadic,
following their herds.
• 20. According to the Bible, the Hebrews weren't
always monotheistic. At one point they worshipped
many different deities. That changed when Moses
brought the Ten Commandments down from a
mountain, and the Hebrews agreed to worship only
one god.
• 21. In the mid-1000s BC, King Saul united them,
getting all the tribes together to face the
Philistines, who lived on the same seacoast. This
began a battle that still continues to this day in
the Israeli-Arab conflict in Middle East.
• 22. After Saul, King David defeated the
Philistines and other enemies and conquered
the city of Jerusalem, which he made his
capital. (David and The Goliath)
• 23. In about 965 BC, King Solomon, David's son,
came to power.. King Solomon made Hebrew
control over the area complete. He built an
empire for his people and, according to the Bible,
the First Temple in Jerusalem. Eventually they
were overtaken and made into slaves.